We (my physicist/farmer husband & me & the dogs & the cats) moved from sprawling Houston, TX to a small, but useless farm in Florida. Then the donkey moved in. He was lonely, so the goats came. & then some horses, some more dogs, chickens, cockatiels, more cats, new horses. You get the picture.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The sky is falling, the sky is falling...no, really it's falling....fer crissakes LOOK UP

Chickens panic. It is what they do. & even when they are not panicking they sound a little panicky. Their natural, resting voice is a little bit "what's that, what are you doing, why are you here, who the hell are you anyhow?" It has been especially rough on them since Wednesday when the sky did indeed start falling.

I know some of you do not want to hear this (& some are saying "I hear you") but we need rain. We need it bad. As of last Tuesday, there were 75 fires burning in this county alone (25 of them started since the previous weekend). I know that sounds like a lot but not a whole lot, except this is a county of <250k people & <100 square miles of land, almost 10% of that is water. This means there is 1 fire for every 3,300 people or every 13 square miles or so. In one week.

Then, on Wednesday we got 6/10ths of an inch of rain in under 40 minutes. That is a lot of rain all at once & it came in with very high winds on both ends. When the storm left, my hen house had a ruffled edging along the roof. I realize that is nothing compared to say, Joplin, but it was plenty for us. As for helping with the fires, it did some. It also ignited a few (lightening) & brought one that was under control out over the firebreaks (high winds).

& so on Saturday, we (& by "we" I mean A) began re-roofing the henhouse. There were other structural things that needed doing as well, so we (he) went ahead & did them, replacing beams, clearing old, mostly-broken perches, etc. In order to do this, we had to move all of the henhouse structures (all but one we hoped, it is really more improvement than infrastructure, but in the end it too had to go, at least temporarily get out). While the sun was going down, the lady-birds turned their beaks for home only to discover all of their worldly goods tipped out into the pasture & their home still roofless!

We scrambled & got most of the panels up put some beams across them for weight & the ladies perched up on the roof beam they prefer, the new roof balanced but not fastened overhead. On Sunday, we woke up bright & early to continue the job & then this morning A went a firmly fastened the last narrow row of panels for the next round of high winds.

The best part of this was watching those poor birds. All weekend the hens wandered around all of their stuff tipped out all over the pasture & reminded me of nothing so much as the mother in "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" trying to keep her child busy & her neighbors from looking through all her worldly good while movers pile everything she own in the NYC sidewalk.

//about the math: yes, I could have said 3/5ths of an inch of rain but the rain gauge is marked in tenths. Also, if the math does not quite work in the equations that is because I used the actual numbers (population, square miles) & not the less-than-this rounded number. If you are so inclined you can back into the actual numbers doing the problems in reverse. Or you can just get on with your day.